Recently in Intellectual Property Law Category

In an opinion out of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the massive pharma company Boehringer seems to have squeezed out a narrow victory in a rather large discovery dispute over attorney-client privileged communications between corporate employees and corporate attorneys.

And while the court upheld the district court's ruling that attorney-client privilege applied to the communications between employee and attorney, the underlying facts of the communication could nevertheless be fair game.

While using your smartphone, have you ever sent a text message to or called someone who didn't you give you their number, or explicitly consent for you to call or text? If you have, there's good and bad news.

First the bad news: Apparently, you broke the current FCC commissioners understanding of the TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) by texting/calling without consent. Now the good news: The D.C. Circuit just killed the FCC's interpretation of the rule that could have, theoretically (in some magical land), been used to allow individuals to sue each other over, and this is according the majority opinion here, unexpected social gathering invitations.

In one corner of Poland, Telewizja Polska was broadcasting television episodes on the internet for on-demand users. In another corner of New York City, lawyers discovered by downloading the episodes that the programs violated U.S. copyright law.

The controversy made it to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where the judges resolved it. TV Polska owes the copyright holders more than $3 million.

Several weeks have passed since the D.C. Circuit ruled that the FCC possessed the power to reclassify broadband companies as telecom common carriers, thereby subjecting them to regulatory authority. Well, some of the bigger names in the industry have already decided to fight back.

It was the kind of petition we just knew was in the works. After all, the reclassification stands to shake up potentially billions of dollars in investment by interested parties. What's a little extra cost for petitioning?

American music would be much worse without college radio. College radio stations helped bring us The Pixies and music-snob mags like CMJ. Your local college radio station is one of the few places willing to let kids spin avant-garde African pop for an hour every week.

As you're waiting in line at the airport to get your full body scan, or have your stuff rifled through, you might peer over at the stack of bins, into which you're hastily stuffing your laptop and shoes, and notice that there are ads in them. Since 2007, the TSA has offset the cost of security checkpoints by selling ad space in the bottom of its X-ray bins.

ReGen Biologics made a device called a Collagen Scaffold for use in knee surgery. ReGen began the process of obtaining FDA approval for the device in 2004. In 2006, several members of Congress from New Jersey, where ReGen is based, expressed concern about the review process. In 2008, the FDA ultimately classified the Collagen Scaffold as a Class II device, which requires less regulation.

But months after getting the approval, a Wall Street Journal article alleged "political pressure" in the Collagen Scaffold approval process. Members of Congress expressed umbrage (no doubt in the most public ways possible) and the FDA investigated, finding that ReGen was a little too close to FDA officials, who didn't follow standard procedures when approving the Collagen Scaffold. The FDA summarily reclassified the device as a Class III device, which had the practical effect of making it unmarketable unless ReGen applied all over again.

The D.C. Circuit struck down relevant portions of the FCC's Open Internet rules resulting in a slightly more claustrophobic Internet.

The D.C. Circuit eliminated the anti-blocking and anti-discrimination requirements in the FCC's Open Internet Order. The ruling was based on the Verizon v. FCCcase, where Verizon challenged the FCC's authority to impose the rules on broadband networks.

This case is a big win for ISPs and sets a strong precedent for future network neutrality cases.

About DC Circuit

DC Circuit features news and information from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which hears appeals from U.S. District Courts in the District of Columbia. This blog also features news that would be of interest to legal professionals practicing in the D.C. Circuit. Have a comment or tip? Write to us.